Nuance / Siri Voice Features Already in Apple’s iOS 5?

Nuance and Siri integration failed to make an appearance at Apple’s WWDC keynote, although a slide showing a host of iOS 5 features shows features related to VoiceOver and text-to-speech: “Option to speak text selection”, “VoiceOver item chooser”, and “VoiceOver action support”. It is unclear whether Apple really did integrate Siri and Nuance into iOS 5 or if they made the speech advancements on their own terms. The original rumors had said that iOS 5 would feature major integration of voice recognition capabilities.

The possibility of these features are still likely as Apple only highlighted 10 of the over 200 hundred features in iOS 5. Apple did not mention any voice recognition features in iOS 5 or any other Nuance-related announcements and only spoke briefly about it’s updated notification system, dubbed Notification Center, and other applications. TechCrunch, who originally reported such a feature, now updates its claims to say that the Siri and Nuance features may still be in the works.

We’re still looking into this, but here’s the latest we’re hearing. At least three of our original sources on this were “very surprised” not to hear anything during the keynote today. One noted that leading up to the last minute, they were sure new, elaborate voice features in iOS 5 were going to be announced on stage. It didn’t happen. Apple has been known to pull things at the last second. But this may go deeper.

Apple’s iOS 5 is reported to be released in the Fall, possibly after the release of new hardware and is still expected to be released with updated Siri and Nuance voice features. Either way, iOS 5 is still a solid update and there are still many more features to be yet seen. Stay tuned, we’ll keep you posted on any new features we see.